The government will allow Chinese tourists as soon as China lifts a ban on its tourists visiting Taiwan, the head of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, one day after the Cabinet urged Beijing to complete talks on the matter with Taiwan within six months.
Council Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) made the remarks yesterday in reply to questions from People First Party (PFP) legislators at a meeting.
"If [China] lets its people come [to Taiwan] tomorrow, we will greet them tomorrow," Wu said.
Lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the PFP hailed the government's announcement that it would unilaterally open the door to Chinese tourists when it is ready, even if negotiations with China are not completed within six months.
The Cabinet also said on Wednesday that it would open up more cross-strait chartered flights both for cargo and passengers within six months, depending on the progress of negotiations.
KMT Legislator Tseng Yung-chuan (
There was speculation that the government dropped its demand for government-to-government talks before accepting Chinese visitors in order to outflank the KMT.
Wu told the PFP legislators that the government had been trying to negotiate with the Chinese side on the tourism issue.
PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun(
"Why did the government set a deadline of six months if the policy was already decided?" Lee said.
Wu responded: "I will try hard to manage the pressure."
"If some people try to thwart the government in implementing the policies, I will still labor to advance them," he said.
Wu spoke with the PFP legislators when he accompanied Vice Premier Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to a meeting to invite them to attend a June economic conference the government is planning.
Lee said the PFP would attend the conference if the government recognized a 10-point consensus reached between PFP Chairman James Soong (
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Ho Min-hao (
Additional reporting by Jewel Huang
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift